758 



HOMINY 



HOMOEOPATHY 



homilies are not now read in churches ; but there is 

 no law to prevent their being so read, and they are 

 frequently appealed to in controversies as to the 

 doctrine of the Anglican Church on the points of 

 which they treat. The precise degree of authority 

 due to them is matter of doubt. 



Hominy, a preparation of maize, coarsely 

 ground and boiled ; a kind of Indian corn porridge. 



Homocercal. See HETEROCERCAL. 



Homoeopathy (homoion, ' like ;' pathos, ' dis- 

 ease ' ), a medical doctrine, which teaches that 

 diseases should be treated or cured by drugs 

 capable of producing similar symptoms of disordered 

 health to those presented by them ; or, as it is com- 

 monly phrased, ' likes should be treated by likes,' 

 or let likes be cured by likes similia similibus 

 curentur. 



The earliest mention of this doctrine occurs in 

 one of the books attributed to Hippocrates, who 

 taught that some diseases were cured by similars 

 and some by contraries. He illustrated the former 

 by pointing to mandrake as a cure for mania ; 

 'give the patient,' he says, 'a draught made from 

 the root of mandrake in a smaller dose than is suffi- 

 cient to produce mania.' Reference is also made to 

 the doctrine of similars by several medical authors 

 during the centuries that followed. In 1738 Stahl, 

 a Danish army surgeon, wrote that ' the rule gener- 

 ally acted upon in medicine to treat by means of 

 oppositely acting remedies is quite false, and the 

 reverse of what ought to be ; I am, on the contrary, 

 convinced that diseases will yield to and be cured 

 by remedies that produce a similar affection. ' The 

 celebrated Von Stoerck, in 1762, urged the same 

 rule as a reason for using stramonium in insanity. 

 Though impressed with the importance of this 

 doctrine, these writers took no steps towards ren- 

 dering it available in the practice of medicine. To 

 do this was reserved for Samuel Hahnemann (q.v. ), 

 who, in 1796, in an essay entitled ' Suggestions for 

 ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs,' pub- 

 lished in Hit/eland's Journal, then the leading 

 medical periodical of Europe, showed, as the result 

 of a series of researches ana experiments extending 

 over six years, that in this doctrine lay the key to 

 the selection of specifically acting medicines ; of 

 medicines, that is, which cure by exercising a direct 

 influence upon the parts diseased, as distinguished 

 from those which relieve by what is termed their 

 ' derivative ' action. For example, it was then, and 

 is now, customary to endeavour to control congestion 

 of the brain by purgatives, by medicines operating 

 not on the brain but upon the bowels. Hahne- 

 mann, on the other hand, asserted that congestion 

 of the brain was most quickly and certainly cured 

 by prescribing small doses of a medicine which pre- 

 vious experiment had proved to have a special 

 influence upon the circulation in that organ a 

 direct method. The nature of this influence, he 

 further showed, must be one of similarity. This 

 similarity was, he pointed out, recognised by the 

 symptoms indicating the nature of the disease- 

 process on the one hand, and those marking the 

 action of the drug when taken by persons in ordi- 

 nary health on the other. 



This doctrine, then, applies solely to that part of 

 the treatment of disease which relates to the use of 

 medicines ; and further, it is restricted to prescrib- 

 ing medicines in diseases which are not dependent 

 for their existence on some mechanical cause, such 

 as the presence of a mass of undigested food in the 

 stomach, or of a stone in the bladder. To those 

 parts of treatment which are concerned with nurs- 

 ing, dietetics, hygiene, the use of water in various 

 ways, electricity, massage, &c., homoeopathy, as 

 such, bears no reference ; though those physicians 

 who have adopted it attach great importance to 



these therapeutic measures. Homoeopathy has 

 solely to do with the selection of drugs when these 

 are needed for directly curative purposes a suffi- 

 ciently wide range truly ! Hahnemann's claims to 

 distinction as a therapeutist rest not merely on his 

 having recognised this doctrine as a rule of drug 

 selection in a wide range of diseases this had been 

 done to some extent by others, as he himself has 

 admitted but upon his having rendered it possible 

 to apply it in practice ; as he wrote in 1810, ' no 

 one has as yet taught this homoeopathic therapeutic 

 doctrine.' If it were true that the symptoms 

 evoked by a drug should regulate its employment 

 in disease, the symptoms which drugs will cause 

 must needs be ascertained. Hence the study of 

 drugs by making experiments with them upon 

 healthy persons drug-proving, as it is termed be- 

 came a cardinal point in the teaching of Hahne- 

 mann. It forms, indeed, the first maxim of 

 homoeopathy. 



Further, if a medicine is to be used that will pro- 

 duce a condition like that which it is intended to 

 cure, it is obvious that it must be prescribed in a 

 dose smaller than that in which it is capable of 

 producing such a condition. This much was clear 

 to Hahnemann when he first applied homoeopathy 

 at the bedside. During the first three or four years 

 of his doing so he used doses of from three to four 

 grains of such medicines as nux vomica and vera- 

 trum powder ; of arnica powder he gave ' a few 

 grains ; ' of ignatia, from three to seven grains, and 

 so on. As his experience in the use of medicines 

 upon this basis increased he found that far more 

 minute doses than these were all-sufficient, and in 

 1806 he writes of his giving hundredths, thou- 

 sandths, and millionths of the quantities required 

 to obtain the antipathic or allopathic action of a 

 drug. In graduating his doses Hahnemann fol- 

 lowed where his experience seemed to lead him, his 

 one desire apparently being to give no more medi- 

 cine than was absolutely necessary for the cure of 

 disease. 



What is the safest, surest, and best dose in which 

 to prescribe a homceopathically chosen medicine is 

 a question upon which there is a great difference of 

 opinion among those who have studied the subject. 

 The only principles upon which there is any una- 

 nimity among them are that the dose to cure must 

 lie smaller than that which will produce a condition 

 like that to be treated, and that different persons 

 are susceptible to the influence of widely differing 

 doses. The necessity for the dose being a small 

 one is the second maxim of homoeopathy. The 

 third is that medicines must be prescribed in the 

 form in which they were taken when ' proved ' i.e. 

 when the experiments were made which revealed 

 the kind of action they have upon healthy persons. 

 This is essential, because, however well acquainted 

 such experiments may render the physician with 

 medicines individually, they teach him nothing of 

 what the action of such medicines will be when 

 combined with one or more others. He has no 

 means of ascertaining what would be the influence 

 exercised upon the action of his ' base ' by the 

 ' corrective ' or the ' adjuvant ' of the ordinary pre- 

 scription combination of drugs. 



To account for or explain the modus operandi 

 of a homceopathically selected medicine several 

 theories have been advanced. Hahnemann put 

 forward one which, however, he at the same time 

 declared that he regarded as of no importance. So 

 far no explanation hitherto attempted has met with 

 any general acceptance from those who admit the 

 truth of the doctrine. It is as an ultimate fact in 

 therapeutics, the reality and value of which can 

 only be ascertained by putting it into practice at 

 the bedside, that homoeopathy has always been 

 regarded, rather than as a speculative idea to be 



